


Hat Trick

by songofsunset



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Fandom
Genre: Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Cursed Child, Gen, Like I am not gonna judge it till I've seen/read it but also pfffft who the heck is Craig, Other, idek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 17:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7183274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songofsunset/pseuds/songofsunset
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Craig interacts with the Sorting Hat more than most Hogwarts students. </p><p>Who the hell is Craig? That random dude from partway through Cursed Child.</p><p>As weird as Cursed Child is, this might as well be canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hat Trick

**Author's Note:**

> Blame Weepformanetheren on tumblr for encouraging me xP

“Ahhhhhh, what have we here?”

Craig fidgets on the hard stool, hearing the the entire student body of Hogwarts whisper around him. He swallows, wishing he could see something past the drooping hat obscuring all of his vision.

“I- I’m Craig?” he says and the hat chuckles lowly in his ears.

“I know who you are, boy. What matters is- who will you be?”

Craig feels the edges of the stool dig into his hands.

“I- I’m just a kid. I don’t know this place. I don’t know much of anything.”

“Do you seek knowledge, then? Study and learning?”

Craig thinks about the classes he’d taken back at his old school, and grimaces. The hat laughs.

“No? Well perhaps you seek friendship and loyalty? Would you find your home as a Hufflepuff, and guard those you care about to the end?”

Craig shrugs. He’s not really big on that loveydovey stuff. He’d had a couple people he’d liked enough to eat lunch with, maybe?

The hat slumps around his ears, and seems to sigh. “Ambition? Power? No? Fine. We’ll put you in Gryffindor, and if you have any problems, suck it up.”

Craig is less than reassured, but the hat has already yelled out the house and the headmaster is herding him to a table full of screaming people dressed in black and red.

———

Craig Von Steuben the Fourth is not what anyone would call an enthusiastic student, but compared to the rest of the members of his house, he’s might as well be a goddamn philosopher. It’s only the start of second year and he is already so very very done.

“Look-“ Craig says, dodging a paper airplane that would have nailed him in the ear. “Look, I just have-“ he twists, dodging another small fleet, and nearly knocking his stack of papers into the roaring common room fire. “I’m trying to finish this-“ He leans sideways, overbalances, and knocks his ink bottle, splattering himself, his papers, the armchair, and a large swathe of carpet with dark glittering blue ink.

“I WAS TRYING TO FINISH AN ESSAY” Craig bellows, his voice only cracking once. He can’t help but be bitterly proud of how everyone in the room goes silent, even the Weasley-Potter brood. A last handful of airplanes fluttering haphazardly to the ground, and the fireplace crackles loudly.

Craig shakes ink off his hands, not caring where the drops splatter on the already stained carpet. “I-“ he says- “am LEAVING. I am LEAVING and I am NOT COMING BACK.”

“Craig,” says Rose, “It’s fine, we can fix the inkstains, just let me do a spell-

“I. Do. Not. Care,” Craig says throwing his papers and books into his bag. They make a satisfying jumble in his hands. He stomps past the stunned faces of his housemates to the portrait hole, and leaves without another word.

Behind him, he can hear a sudden roar of conversation. He slams the portrait closed.

“Excuse me young man!” The Fat Lady exclaims. “I am not some common doorknocker!”

Craig sighs. It’s not the Fat Lady’s fault his housemates are a bunch of raucous jerks.

“I’m sorry. I’m just gonna- go talk with someone. Hopefully.” The Fat Lady gives him a suspicious look, and Craig leaves before she, or anyone else from his house, gets up the nerve to ask him any questions.

———

Security on the Headmaster’s office could be better.

It could also be worse, but not by a lot.

Craig has lived with Harry Potter’s children for most of the past year. He knows all the stories about how the Great and Mighty Harry Potter snuck around everywhere and got into everything. And he may not have a fancy map or an invisibility cloak, but _his_ dad is a muggle car salesman, so Craig knows how to get what he wants.

“S’cuse me” he says to the nearest harried looking member of the staff. “I’m supposed to meet with McGonagall?”

The man squints down at him and shuffles his mountain of papers. “You are-?“

“I’m Craig, sir. I have a meeting with McGonagall? I don’t want to keep her waiting.”

“Ah, very well, let me just-“ A handful of his papers flutter to the ground, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “If you just turn the corner, and find the statue of the eagle, you can find her upstairs. The password is ‘occlumency’”

“Thank you, sir,” says Craig, handing him a small stack of retrieved papers. “And can I say that I hope you have a lovely evening?”

The man stares at him for a moment like he’s not quite sure what Craig is, then resumes his harried walk down the hallways. Craig grins, and ducks around the corner. Giving the eagle the password and sneaking in through the staircase is the work of just a moment, and then Craig is walking into the Headmaster’s office.

McGonagall is not there, and Craig hadn’t expected her to be. NEWT level Trasfiguration meets at this time, and McGonagall is possessive of her classes. It was about as likely that she would still be here as Craig was to grow wings and fly. Which is to say that it could happen, but something would have to go very very wrong first.

The furniture is practical, and there are books covering every inch of the room that isn’t covered by gently snoring portraits. Craig ignores them, and strides over to the sorting hat, jamming it on his head without ceremony.

“Ahhh, how rare it is to see-“

“Move me out of this freaking house or I swear to god I will set you on fire.”

The hat stiffens with indignation. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“My housemates are a nightmare. You don’t want to know what I would dare.”

If that hat had eyes, Craig has the impression the hat would have been narrowing them suspiciously. “Well.” The hat says. “This one is clear enough, at least.”

———

McGonagall is tired after a long night of intervening in transfiguration disasters, and all she wants when she gets back to her office is to have a nice long cup of tea before she starts in on her grading.

Instead, she finds that second-year muggleborn boy sitting crosslegged on her floor with the sorting hat draped over his face. The boy is giggling to himself. Or rather- giggling at the hat? Minerva cannot think that she’s ever heard the hat make a joke. She can’t think that she’s ever interacted with it long enough to find out.

“Excuse me,” McGonagall says, as crisply as she can manage. “But what is the meaning of this, Mister Von Steuben?”

Craig startles and pushes the hat back up past his face. He grins up at her. “The hat says you have to put me in Slytherin.”

The very notion is ridiculous. No one has ever been re-sorted in all of Hogwarts history, and she opens her mouth to tell him so.

“The hat also says that my name is already moved on the roster and that there’s nothing you can do about it.”

McGonagall closes her mouth. “That’s absurd,” she says, and goes to pull out the main roster to show him, except that, right there near the end-

Von Steuben, Craig— Slytherin.

McGonagall stares. She looks at the book, then at the boy, then back to the book. The boy continues grinning, and McGonagalll rubs the bridge of her nose and sighs. “I trust you are done coercing historical magical relics for the day and are ready for someone to show you to your new room?”

Craig’s eyes go distant for a moment, clearly listening to something she can’t hear. Then he nods. “Sure,” he says, and waits expectantly.

McGonagall suppresses another sigh. She’d expected this sort of thing from the Potter-Weasley family, she really had.

“Aren’t you forgetting something, Von Steuben?” she asks, and the boy stares at her blankly. She pointedly eyes his headgear.

“Oh!” says the boy, and laughs nervously. “My bad.”

What sort of apology ‘my bad’ is supposed to be she can only guess, but the boy takes the hat and puts it on the shelf, and when she moves to lead him down to the dungeons, he goes without a complaint. The house elves have already moved all his belongings by the time they arrive.

———

Craig meets the hat next partway through his third year, when the bullying and namecalling from his pureblooded housemates reach a peak.

“-and then they hid all my stuff in the showers,” Craig is saying, when McGonagall walks in. “And they didn’t even waterproof anything first, it was a disaster!”

McGonagall sighs. “Hello Craig.”

Craig peeks out at her from under the hat’s brim. “Oh, hello professor. I’m having a conversation right now, but I’ll be done in a couple minutes.

“Oh, by all means take your time. I’ll just wait here, then, shall I?”

“That’d be great professor, thanks a bunch!”

McGonagall sighs again, and goes to work on her paperwork. And when, 20 minutes later, Craig finishes up his conversation and informs her that he’s been moved to Hufflepuff, she isn’t even surprised.

———

“And I suppose you’re moving to Ravenclaw now, Mister Von Steuben? Going to make a full set of it?”

“Oh, no, Professor, not today. Today I’m just here to visit.”

“To- visit the Sorting Hat.”

“Yes Ma’am. He gets bored during the school year.”

“Of course. By all means, continue raiding my office without warning or permission, that’s fine.”

“Thanks professor, I knew you’d understand!”

———

Craig is nearly killed, at one point. Of course it would be the Potter-Weasley’s fault.

He switches to Ravenclaw soon after.

———

Shortly before Craig graduates, he confronts McGonagall in her office.

She raises an eyebrow at him. He clutches the sorting hat in his sweaty hands and fidgets nervously.

McGonagall waits. The portraits on the wall shift and mutter.

“I’m taking the hat with me,” Craig blurts, finally.

McGonagall raises her other eyebrow.

“Look, he’s a complicated magical intelligence and he’s my friend. He deserves company and attention more than once a year for seconds at a time! He can come back for sortings and stuff but largely his presence here is unnecessary and forcing him to stay when he is clearly unfulfilled is just asking-“

“Fine!”

Craig swallows, but stands straight. “Pardon?

“Fine. Take the damn hat. Bring him back for sortings, but Merlin knows we don’t need it around the rest of the time. If it will get you out of my ever-greying hair and out of my office then TAKE IT AND BE DONE WITH IT.”

Craig squeezes the hat a little tighter. “Are- are you sure?”

McGonagall sighs, so deep and resonate that the very foundations of the castle seem to sigh with her. “Yes, Von Steuben, I am very very sure.”

Slowly, Craig begins to smile. Then he is outright grinning, and jams the hat onto his head. “Did you hear that?” he says, not paying attention to McGonagall anymore at all. “Yes! I know, right? It’s gonna be great!”

McGonagall watches Craig Von Steuben and the Sorting Hat leave, then sits down at her desk and begins to plan her retirement.


End file.
